It may surprise some to learn that I do watch media other than Star Trek. One of the shows I watch is a little underground show called Game of Thrones. Maybe you’ve heard of it?

Much is being made of the episode that aired on April 28th 2019, “The Long Night”. And many of the grievances being aired are dead wrong. This is the result of our narrative illiteracy as a culture. We are to blame for this deficiency, but we are also victims.

Before continuing here’s a healthy SPOILERS warning. Ahead are some spoilers. Do not continue if you have not seen the episode.

Popular media has never been overly deep, but in decades past it was at least properly constructed. Nobody would ever claim Die Hard is an intricate and thought provoking narrative, it’s popcorn entertainment, however it is tightly constructed and superbly executed. Every plot action is set up, paid off, and leads to the next action in the narrative.

Popular media now isn’t that way. Media now is designed for the broadest appeal, and that means sacrificing on the writing and going straight for the spectacle. Spectacle sells in places like China, where complex narrative themes might be censored and/or lost in translation. While I don’t think Game of Thrones is going for broad appeal in China; its creative team are working within a system that has to compete with entertainment that is competing on that playing field. And so they instinctively play by those rules.

To be clear; I am not blaming China for all of the woes in popular fiction, but it is a huge factor that we can’t ignore. A movie might make only $300M in the United States and then pull in another $700M over-seas, most of that from China. Studios are thinking about this. Studios are pushing this and bleaching their movies to accommodate what will work in foreign markets.

What was wrong?

Ok, so what was wrong with the episode? It had lots of fighting and lots of fire and lots of dragons and some half naked blue dudes and a little girl killed a zombie giant. What’s not to like?

Well… all of those things for starters. Let’s outline the basic points of the episode.

Start: Zombie army approaching Winterfell
End: Night King gets killed

Why is this happening? Let’s fill in some motivations:

Zombie Army: Night King wants to kill Bran/The Three Eyed Raven so he can destroyed the memory of mankind.
Defenders: Know this is what the Night King wants, so they are going to let him attack, lure him in, so they can kill him.

Everyone got that? Good.

This is not interpretation. This is not inference. This is explicitly said in the previous episode. This is what we have to work with and we have to make it interesting.

So how did they do it?

80 minutes of pointless fighting until the Night King walks up to Bran and Arya sucker punches him.

Almost nothing the characters did prior to the end informed the way the ending proceeded. It was just nonsense fighting against a foe that was impossible to defeat.

How would I fix it?

I’m going to take a stab at how you make this episode interesting.

Jon, Daenerys, and co form a plan. The armies will hole up inside Winterfell to make a frontal assault by the Night King a difficult task. Jon and Daenerys hold back with the dragons, make the Night King think they’ve fled. This is a huge risk. Everyone will have to put up a good fight because they need the Night King to think that he has to enter the fight on his dragon because his armies can’t get the job done. Once he does finally reveal himself; Jon and Daenerys ambush him on the dragons and hopefully can dismount him and with any luck they can melt him with dragon fire. And if that doesn’t work, retreat and get Bran out of there. — This is just the setup. This is them talking about what they want to do. Obviously it won’t go this way, that’s where the drama comes in.

So the army appears and attacks the walls, as expected. The defenders put up a valiant fight, a successful one at that. Keep cutting to Jon and Daenerys anxious about all the casualties. One assures the other “This is the plan. We have to stay here. We have to let this play out.”

Many defenders are killed, but they are winning. Maybe even some of the half naked White Walker dudes get into the fray and when they see the defenders can kill them run like punks back into the woods. There is hope. This dead army and Night King don’t seem so bad. Then the giant wall of winter fog comes in. Jon and Daenerys panic. They can’t see what’s going on. They take to flight and charge in, but can see nothing. The Night King swoops in with his dragon and uses its breath to knock down a huge section of the wall.

The dead army rushes in, things have gone from hopeful to dire, but our heroes stand their ground. The plan is still in place because now Jon and Daenerys can see The Night King and they move in to attack. Epic dragon battle takes place. In the end the Night King is unseated, his dragon killed, but Jon’s dragon is wounded terribly. Jon is forced to land far away from where the Night King came down. But Daenerys is still in the fight. She squares up on the Night King and roasts him. He is unfazed. The defenders in the castle see this as well, namely Arya. He tries to take down Daenerys’s dragon, she flees. She is harassed by the chickenshit White Walkers who emerge from the forest again. She is forced to stay clear of the fight.

Jon gives chase on foot back to the castle, but the Night King is far ahead of him. When the Night King enters the castle the fight is nearly over with the undead army. But then the Night King does his resurrection special. One after another defenders come after the Night King, slowing him down, but he dispatches them one by one. Now the dead are back on their feet and fighting, including the defenders recently killed. Keep cutting to Arya trying to fight her way through the crowd to get to the Night King, but the army of the undead is so thick she has trouble getting to him. She gets the idea to climb and starts darting across the slippery walls and roofs, nearly falling. Her ninja training is put to the test. It’s from her perspective that we see Jon is now in the castle and heading for the grove.

The Night King makes his way into the grove. He is assaulted by the defenders, including Theon, who puts up a valiant fight before dying. The Night King is about to strike Bran when Jon charges in behind him. The Night King and Jon duel. Jon knocks away the Night King’s sword, but the night king gets the upper hand, literally, holding Jon up by the neck and holding his sword arm to the side while Jon struggles against the grip on his neck.

Jon’s expression suddenly turns from anguish to surprise as he looks over the Night King’s shoulder. The Night King turns to see Arya leaping through the air. He tries to turn, but the distraction has weakened his grip on Jon, who now has hold of the Night King’s arms, locking him in place. Arya connects with her dagger, slicing the Night King’s neck. Instead of an instant ice explosion; blue blood pours from his neck. His icy skin gives way to once again reveal his human form. His blue blood turns red as he coughs and sputters on the ground, then finally stops moving.

Around the castle the dead slowly start to fall over. At the edge of the forest, where the rest of the White Walkers are chilling, the fog lifts and they sense the death of their master. They let out a terrifying howl and start charging toward the castle, weapons ready. They hear a loud whooshing behind them. They stop… Daenerys is behind them. They are not immune to dragon’s fire. She roasts them all.

Save the “you were meant to kill someone with blue eyes” shit until after the battle, instead of an “a-ha” moment during the middle of the fight. This cheapens the climax. Instead of Arya thinking it’s her destiny, she’s just doing her best. She is using her skills to save all of humanity. Then after the fight she sees the Red Woman and remembers her prophetic words. Then we all get to go “WHOA!” together.

Is this a perfect re-write of that episode? No. This was just me writing from the top of my head on how I would fix it. But it does correct a lot of the problems with the way the episode actually plays out. Every action leads to the next action. If you pull out one piece the next piece fails. The fight is meaningful because the defenders have purpose because they are part of the plan, not just disposable bodies to throw at an impossible to defeat foe. Even Theon fighting to the death delays the Night King long enough for Jon to get there, who delays the Night King long enough for Arya to finish him. Remove those two pieces and dude ices Bran (literally?) and Arya is like “Oh, shit… gotta go!” and then bolts.

While I’m still blabbering I would like to also address two complaints I’ve heard floating around about the episode.

Arya is a Mary Sue and it’s just some SJW bullshit that she kills the Night King

I have come to hate the term “Mary Sue” so much because as soon as it gained popularity it was immediately being abused. A “Mary Sue” was originally a character who is dropped into an existing narrative free of blemish or struggle with the ability to solve all the real protagonists problems without all the pesky flaws and doubts. This originated in the fan-fiction world as a masturbatory exercise. “If I was at Hogwarts I could fix all the problems Harry couldn’t and I would have all the magic and everyone would like me and I would be the best looking.” (no pauses or breaths while reading that)

The term evolved to mean a poorly written protagonist who lacks character flaws. The most obvious recent examples of this are Rey from the new Star Wars trilogy and Wade/Parzival from Ready Player One. Both characters are impossibly good at everything and have no actual flaws that they must overcome to succeed in their journey. And neither appear to grow in any meaningful way as the story progresses.

Arya is none of these things. Arya is a well developed character who has evolved over the course of seven seasons. It’s ok if you don’t like her arc. You’re welcome to your opinion, but you cannot ignore it or pretend it wasn’t properly established that she is a proficient fighter, a sneaky assassin, and “destined” to kill the Night King. Hell the exact move she uses to dispatch the Night King is even shown a few episodes earlier when she spars with Brienne. So stuff that garbage right now. It’s nonsense. The way she killed the Night King may not have been satisfying, but you’re complaining about the wrong thing.

No meaningful deaths took place

I apologize, is this a requirement for good story telling? Most Pixar movies are superbly written and very few of them feature random mutilations characters (save for Cars 2). Just because the show has, in the past, killed a lot of important people, doesn’t mean it has to do it to keep the story interesting. In fact, if anything, given the real flaws with the writing of this episode, it’s best that we didn’t see important characters die, because all of those deaths would have been meaningless.